Air pollution is a growing problem in most cities (big and small). The "Daily Dose" aims to disseminate the best available information on air pollution and engage in discussions to better understand the process of air quality management. For more details on the program, please visit http://www.urbanemissions.info

Monday, June 04, 2012

Ironic twist alert: most electricity production requires vast amounts of water. Cold water. Which means that climate change is going to be bad for electricity supplies.

Why's that ironic? Here's how we make electricity. In the U.S., we burn
coal or natural gas, which produces massive quantities of the
greenhouse gases causing climate change, or we fission uranium. The heat
from those processes boils water that makes steam that spins a turbine. And those turbines produce more than 90 percent of our electricity.

Massive cooling towers then help chill the power plant back down using
river water, for example. Only river water isn't quite as cold as it
used to be, or as available. As a result, in recent years, such thermal
power plants in the southeastern U.S. have had to decrease power production because river temperatures were too high or water levels were too low.

That problem is only going to get worse, according to an analysis in the journal Nature Climate Change. (Scientific American
is part of Nature Publishing Group.) By the 2040s, available
electricity could be down by 16 percent in the summertime. When you’d
most like electricity. To run your air conditioner. To beat the heat.
Told you it was ironic.